Word-Wednesday for February 16, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, February 16, 2022, the seventh Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of winter, and the 47th day of the year, with 318 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for February 16, 2022
Snow Full Moon Tonight

February 16 Nordhem Lunch: Updated daily.



Earth/Moon Almanac for February 16, 2021
Sunrise: 7:30am; Sunset: 5:46pm; 3 minutes, 24 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 5:44pm; Moonset: 8:02am, full moon, 99% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for February 16, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             20                     48                      8
Low              -4                    -38                   -25
 

Could be worse:

February 16 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Almond Day
• National Do A Grouch a Favor Day

February 16 Word Riddle
When does a joke become a dad-joke?*


February 16 Word Pun
Before was was was was was is.


February 16 Etymology Word of the Week
empathy
/ˈem-pə-THē/, n.,  the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
1908, modeled on German Einfühlung (from ein "in" + Fühlung "feeling"), which was coined 1858 by German philosopher Rudolf Lotze (1817-1881) as a translation of Greek empatheia "passion, state of emotion," from assimilated form of en "in" (see en- (2)) + pathos "feeling" (from Proto-Indo-European root *kwent(h)- "to suffer"). A term from a theory of art appreciation that maintains appreciation depends on the viewer's ability to project his personality into the viewed object.

The composite creation of a doctor (Wilhelm Wundt), a philosopher (Theodore Lipps), a poet (Rainer Maria Rilke), and a sculptor (August Rodin), the word empathy in the modern sense only came into use at the dawn of the twentieth century as a term for the imaginative act of projecting yourself into a work of art, into a world of feeling and experience other than your own.


February 16 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 374 Ninth recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.
• 600 Pope Gregory the Great decrees saying "God bless you" is the correct response to a sneeze.
• 1741 Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine begins publishing.
• 1751 First publication of Thomas Gray's poem, Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.
• 1838 Kentucky passes law permitting women to attend school under conditions.
• 1861 Abraham Lincoln stops his train at Westfield on his way to Washington to thank 11-year old Grace Bedell in person for her advice to grow a beard to gain more votes.

February 16 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1684 Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský, Czech monk/composer.
• 1746 Johann Heinse, German Sturm und Drang novelist/art critic.
• 1838 Henry Adams, American historian and writer.
• 1850 Octave Mirbeau, French writer.
• 1852 William S. Scarborough, American linguist and author.
• 1883 Elizabeth Craig, British writer.
• 1903 Edgar Bergen, American ventriloquist.
• 1911 Hal Porter, Australian writer.
• 1920 Hubert van Herreweghen, Flemish writer.
• 1937 Paul Bailey, English novelist.
• 1948 Eckhart Tolle, German-born author.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem or pram) from the following words:

• bindle: /BIN-dl/ n., the bag or bundle carried by the stereotypical vagabond.
• chopsy: /ˈtʃɑp-si/ adj., having proiminent, fleshy jowls; jowly; in Welsh English, inclined to talk a lot, especially in a rude, insolent, or belligerent way; loud-mouthed; in music, especially jazz, displaying or characterized by technical virtuosity; having or demonstrating impressive “chops”.
• froideur: /f(r)wɑ-ˈdər/ n., coldness of manner; indifference, disdain, reserve.
• gleimous: /GLEE-uh-mus/ adj., slimy; full of phlegm.
• handschuhschneeballwerfer: /HAHND-schoo-SHNAY-bahl-VEHR-fer/ n., one lacking the courage to endure dangerous or unpleasant things; a coward; a German compound word meaning “one who wears gloves to throw snowballs” but idiomatically used to mean “coward”.
• obconical: /äbˈ-kän-ə-k(ə)l/ adj., in the form of an inverted cone.
• peripety: /pə-ˈri-pə-tē/ n., a sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances (especially in a literary work).
• sinecure: /‘si-nə-ˌkyo͝or/ n., a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit.
• twankle: /TWANG-kuhl/ v., to strum or play an instrument with an air of insouciant nonchalance.
• velleity: /vah-LEE-uh-tee/ n., a scheme, wish, or inclination which is not strong enough to lead one to take action; a fanciful dream or aspiration that is believed to be unattainable, so which is left unstrove for.

February 16, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Words about Wintering
/ˈwɪn-tər-iŋ/ v., spending or passing the winter in a place.
Albert Camus once wrote, "In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." Another writer regularly featured on Word-Wednesday, René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, referred to winter as the season for tending to the inner garden of the soul:

You might notice that in some ways the effects of our winter experiences are similar. You write of a constant sense of fullness, an almost overabundance of inner being, which from the outset counterbalances and compensates all deprivations and losses that might possibly come. In the course of my work this last long winter, I have experienced a truth more completely than ever before: that life’s bestowal of riches already surpasses any subsequent impoverishment. What, then, remains to be feared? Only that we might forget this! But around and within us, how much it helps to remember!

Let's not forget Thoreau's meandering meditation, "Winter Walk" from Excursions, where he wrote:

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill…. What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day, when the meadow mice come out by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place.

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.

If you're looking for a book to see you fruitfully through the remainder of this snowy season, Word-Wednesday encourages you to curl up with Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May. May's book reminds obligate Wannaskan winterers that this season helps us incrementally learn to master happiness and sadness - if we remain attentive.

When you start tuning in to winter, you realize that we live through a thousand winters in our lives — some big, some small… Some winters creep up on us so slowly that they have infiltrated every part of our lives before we truly feel them, tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical.

Like so much of life, May reminds us that nature cycles through times of vitality and times of rest:

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

The natural cycle and renewal of trees is one of May's favorite metaphors for human wintering:

Most trees produce their buds in high summer, and the autumn leaf fall reveals them, neat and expectant, protected from the cold by thick scales… from the sharp talons of the beech to the hooflike black buds of the ash. Many trees also display catkins in the winter, like the acid-green lambs’ tails of the hazel and the furry grey nubs of the willow. These employ the wind or insects to spread pollen, ready for the new year.

The tree is waiting. It has everything ready. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again.

May does not ignore the difficult facts of life - years of hardship, growing ever older - but she does see wintering as a time for some of our greatest personal growth and ongoing contributions to those we love:

Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out. This may involve the breaking of a lifelong habit, one passed down carefully through generations: that of looking at other people’s misfortunes and feeling certain that they brought them upon themselves in a way that you never would. This isn’t just an unkind attitude. It does us harm, because it keeps us from learning that disasters do indeed happen and how we can adapt when they do. It stops us from reaching out to those who are suffering. And when our own disaster comes, it forces us into a humiliated retreat, as we try to hunt down mistakes that we never made in the first place or wrongheaded attitudes that we never held. Either that, or we become certain that there must be someone out there we can blame. Watching winter and really listening to its messages, we learn that effect is often disproportionate to cause; that tiny mistakes can lead to huge disasters; that life is often bloody unfair, but it carries on happening with or without our consent. We learn to look more kindly on other people’s crises, because they are so often portents of our own future.

Winter well, dear readers!


From A Year with Rilke, February 16 Entry
Born of Both Worlds, from Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 6
Is Orpheus of this world? No. The vastness of his nature
is born of both realms.
If you know how the willow is shaped underground,
you can see it more clearly above.

We are told not to leave food
on the table overnight: it draws the dead.
But Orpheus, the conjuring one,
mixes death into all our seeing,
mixes it with everything.
The wafting of smoke and incense
is as real to him as the most solid thing.

Nothing can sully what he beholds.
He praises the ring, the bracelet, the pitcher,
whether it comes from a bedroom or a grave.

Photo by Mike Dawson

Be better than yesterday,
learn a new word today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.



*When it becomes painfully apparent.